Cooking (and a little football) from Cameroon

Jun. 11, 2010

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Rose Tata in her Montpelier kitchen with a bowl of peanut (ground nut) soup and a mortar brought from her native Cameroon used for pounding cassava and other tubers, staples in Cameroonian cuisine.

Classic dishes from Cameroon

Note that cooking varies by region. There are more than 220 tribal languages in the country; French and English are also spoken. These are the Anglophone names for the dishes.

• Ndole, probably the most famous Cameroonian dish, is a stew of bitterleaf (see below) and sometimes other green leafy vegetables, dried shrimp or prawns, thickened with ground raw peanuts and flavored with meat stock or Maggi cubes. It is usually served with boiled taro or bobolo (see below). • Bitterleaf — also called ndole — is used to describe several species of Vernonia, which are eaten as leaf vegetables. It is washed carefully to reduce its bitterness and is sold both fresh and dried. • Ground nut or Peanut soup is a soup made with stew meat, dried smoked fish, peppers and tomatoes, meat stock or Maggi cubes and thickened with ground roasted peanuts. • Egusi soup is made with stew meat, hot peppers and tomatoes, dried shrimp or fish, green leafy vegetables and thickened with ground squash or melon seeds called egusi. • Fufu is made from boiling starchy ingredients and grinding them into a sticky mass. It is served with soups and stews; you form a small ball with the fingers of your right hand and dip it into a sauce or stew. Starches in the north of Cameroon include corn, peanuts and millet, and in the south, root vegetables like cassava, plantains and yams. • Gari is granules of processed cassava, which can be moistened to eat. It is eaten like rice or couscous, or even as cereal. In Cameroon, it is often made in rural homes from raw cassava, but it can also be purchased already processed. Cassava, also known as yuca and manioc in other parts of the world, is a starchy tuberous root and a very important source of food in Cameroon and elsewhere. • Bobolo is made with soft fermented cassava, shaped into a loaf and wrapped in leaves. • Mbongo Tchobi is a river fish (carp or eel) cooked in a tomato-based sauce seasoned with spices and herbs. • Achu is a dish from Rose Tata’s region of Bamenda in northwest Cameroon. The starchy boiled tubers of two kinds of taro are pounded with cooked green (unripe) banana until soft. To make achu soup, add spices, beef, cow skin and dried fish along with palm oil and hot water. • Eru is both the name of an edible leafy plant of the Gnetum species and a dish made with the leaves along with water fufu (made with cassava), dried shrimp, palm oil and cow skin. • Ekwang is made with mashed cocoyam (taro) tubers rolled in leaves, layered with dried smoked fish or crayfish, spices and vegetables.

Compiled by Melissa Pasanen with assistance from Johnson and Rose Tata.

Recipe: Cameroon Peanut (Ground Nut) Soup

Adapted from Rose Tata

In a heavy soup pot, put about 1 pound cubed beef stew meat, 1 chopped onion, 2 Maggi cubes (or other bouillon). Cover with water and add a pinch of salt. Bring to an aggressive simmer over medium-high heat and cook, covered, until meat is fairly tender, at least 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast about 2 cups red-skin peanuts (can be found at Thai Phat Market, 100 North St.) for a few minutes in the microwave until they smell fragrant. Grind them into a fine meal using a hand grinder or food processor (but don’t turn them into peanut butter!).

In a blender, puree 1 (14.5-ounce) can tomatoes with 1 seeded red bell pepper, a little vegetable oil and another half an onion.

When meat is fairly tender, add one or two chunks of smoked dried fish (can be found at Africa Market, 160 N. Winooski Ave.), large bones removed, adding a little water to cover if necessary. Simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes and then add about 1 cup tomato mixture and about 1 cup ground peanuts.

Stir and simmer for another 15 minutes. Add more tomato mixture or peanuts to thicken if desired. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Serves 6.

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MONTPELIER — Surprisingly, 15-year-old Zacharias Konfor is more excited about food from his native Cameroon than he is about the nation’s prospects in the World Cup, even though its team is considered to be one of the strongest African teams.

“I’m just not feeling it this year. Their best player just got a red card,” said Zacharias, who is known as Zach and is an honors student who plays both soccer and lacrosse for Montpelier High School. “I’m rooting for the Ivory Coast. They have the world’s best players.”

Standing near him in the family’s kitchen last Friday, his mother, Rose Tata, protested in defense of her homeland, but quickly moved her attention back to the stove.

The front electric burner obstinately refused to go on. She turned the knob and smacked it sharply with her hand. It sparked, and she chuckled when a visitor stepped back nervously.

“I’m an African lady,” she said reassuringly. “I deal with fire a lot.”

Rose’s husband, Johnson Tata, immigrated to the United States in 1997 after winning a visa through a lottery. Although he was pursuing graduate studies in environmental and ecological science at the time, he was committed to becoming a minister. “As I was praying one time, I had a dream that I was ministering among Caucasians,” Johnson explained. “But I thought I would go to the U.K. I never ever thought of myself in the U.S.”

The whole family was permitted to come, but because Zach was not quite 2 at the time, Rose stayed in Cameroon until 2002 with the couple’s two younger children. (An older daughter remains in Cameroon with her family.) They were reunited in Indiana where Johnson, a Pentecostal minister and licensed teacher, had been sent by his church, Deeper Christian Life Ministry.

A few years later, Johnson recounted, “The church said, ‘We need you to look at a place where there’s no church and go plant one.’ Rose and I looked at a map and prayed, and God just said Vermont.”

“Vermont is so tiny on the map,” Rose recalled. “We said, ‘But where is Vermont?’”

In 2008, they settled in Montpelier where Johnson ministers to a growing congregation and also substitute teaches while Rose works as a respite and nursing caregiver. Their older son, Jeremiah Konfor, now 22 and a university student, remained in Indiana and, his parents noted proudly, is actually now in South Africa working on a project providing laptop computers to children. They expect he will get to some of the World Cup matches. “His friends call him Eto’o,” his mother said, referring to the high-profile star of the Cameroon “Indomitable Lions” national team. “He looks like him, and he plays like him.”

The Tata home is open to church members who come for weekly meals and sometimes just drop in. On a recent afternoon, Rose was spreading peanut butter on bread for a congregant who had stopped by.

She made very clear, however, that one place she will never put peanut butter is in her peanut soup — a classic African dish also known as ground nut soup — even though many Westernized versions of the recipes call for prepared peanut butter.

“When I used peanut butter once, my kids said, ‘Mommy, what is that?” she said.

Her teenage son begged to differ. “When I made it, I used peanut butter,” Zach said. “It tastes the same, Mom.”

“It didn’t taste the same to me,” his mother disagreed with a smile. “Zach is a very good cook,” Rose continued as she bustled about the kitchen gathering ingredients for her peanut soup.

“In Cameroon, we would grind the peanuts on a stone. They need to be very smooth,” Rose explained while her son used a different kind of grinder to create a fine peanut meal.

She checked the pot of beef stew meat, water, chopped onion and Maggi seasoning cubes she had set on an aggressive simmer and pureed together a large can of tomatoes with two red bell peppers, some oil and some more onion.

“I saute the tomato and onion,” Zach said, continuing to demonstrate that every cook has his or her own style.

His mother asked him to check the meat. “It’s not that tender, but I think you should put the fish in anyway,” he counseled.

As Rose pulled out the large bones from two chunks of dried smoked fish, she explained: “In Cameroon, we like to mix our ingredients. You put a little bit of meat, a little bit of fish, a little bit of cow skin. If we had cow skin in this, it would take a lot more time to cook. It takes a lot of time, but it gives some really good aroma.”

She does not use cow skin as much here in America, she said, although it can sometimes be bought from the African market in Burlington where the dried fish is sold. It is a drive from Montpelier, but the Tatas went farther in Cameroon for their fish, they said.

“In Cameroon,” Johnson said, “We would wake up at midnight, and we would drive to the market to be there when the fishermen come at 3 a.m.”

“If you don’t come then,” his wife added, “you don’t get the best fish.” At the market, the couple said, there would be lots of shrimp and crayfish, too, mostly dried.

Cameroon, the Tatas explained, was actually named after shrimp by the Portuguese who arrived in the late 15th century. The Europeans were so impressed by the abundant shrimp that they named a major river, Rio dos Camaroes, “River of Shrimp” in Portuguese, which evolved into the country’s name.

Rose checked the soup and stirred some of the pureed tomato mixture and a handful of the ground peanuts into the steaming pot. In the meantime, Zach mixed himself up an after-school snack of cassava granules with milk, a handful of the whole toasted peanuts and sugar.

“It’s a traditional snack, like African cereal,” he said, proving that teenagers the world over love their cereal. “In Africa, you use water instead of milk,” he added.

As he spooned up his cereal, Zach shared some memories of his early years in Cameroon and described favorite foods like spicy, fresh, whole tilapia marinated in a paste of Jamaican curry powder, fresh ginger, garlic, onions and vegetable oil and then broiled or cooked on the grill.

“Tell about Ekwang,” he asked his mother. “That is also my favorite. It’s a very, very good meal.”

For Ekwang, Rose explained as she finished up the peanut soup, you start with peeled and grated cocoyam, a kind of taro root. “I used to make graters,” Zach interjected. “In Cameroon, you just punch holes in a can.”

“You put the grated cocoyam in a pan with a little bit of salt,” Rose continued. “Then you roll a little bit of cocoyam in a leaf and put it in the bottom of a pot. You get many of them all lined up in the pot. Then you put smoked dried crayfish and smoked dried fish. Then sliced onions; you can fry them first with tomatoes if you want. Put in water a little at a time and put it on low to cook.”

“And it tastes so good,” Zach concluded with relish.

The peanut soup, ladled into bowls, also tasted so good with deep flavor from the smoked fish and the Maggi seasoning and a smooth, rich texture from the ground peanuts.

To spice up the soup, Rose offered some of her special hot pepper sauce that friends have told her she should bottle and sell. “My husband doesn’t eat hot pepper, but I like hot pepper on food,” she said.

It is another place where mother and son have different tastes. “It’s so hot it will kill you,” Zach said.